Tag: Hawaii

CagePotato.com has learned that ProElite’s second show under its new ownership and management will happen November 5 at the iWireless Center in Moline, Illinois. Although no announcements have been made regarding the event, which is tentatively dubbed “ProElite II” or the show’s fight card, according to a published report, former UFC heavyweight champions Tim Sylvia (29-7) and Andrei Arlovski (16-9) are both verified to be on the card, only not against each other just yet.

ProElite had originally planned to hold its next show back in Hawaii, but evidently decided that Illinois was a better fit, considering Arlovski lives and trains two hours west of Moline in Chicago and Sylvia is a part-time police officer in Milan, less than 15 minutes away from the venue.

According to the report, Sylvia will be taking on another former UFC champ instead, Pedro Rizzo in the show’s main event and Arlovski will square off with journeyman fighter Travis Fulton (247 – 48 – 10 1 NC ).

“The Pitbull” will be looking to snap a four-fight losing streak that includes first-round knockouts against Fedor Emelianenko, Brett Rogers, and Sergei Kharitonov. Arlovski’s opponent is unknown at this time — but since Tim Sylvia is also being rumored as another ProElite signee, well, are you thinking what we’re thinking?

(1:44 — "You ever been involved in anything like this before, BJ, besides the havoc that you wreak?")

If you’ve been near a TV or radio anytime today, you probably heard about the massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Chile early this morning, which triggered tsunami warnings in Hawaii. Thankfully, Hawaii seems to have dodged a bullet, wave-wise, but CNN was following the situation closely this afternoon, aided by local correspondent (and UFC lightweight champion) BJ Penn, who provided the cable news channel with a live video feed from his website and helped describe the scene on the ground; video of his segment is above. For more updates on the tsunami-watch in Hawaii, hit up BJPenn.com.

Returning to the ring for the first time since his decision loss to Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza at DREAM.4 last June, Bully Beatdown host Jason "Mayhem" Miller defeated Kala "Kolohe" Hose to capture Kingdom MMA‘s middleweight title at their inaugural event, held Saturday night at the Neal Blaisdell Center in Honolulu. After the two fighters traded some strikes, Mayhem took Hose to the mat, easily scored mount, and began throwing down punches and hammer-fists. Trapped, Hose gave up his back and was immediately caught in a rear-naked choke, tapping at 2:23 into round 1.

When MMA iconoclast/showboat Jason “Mayhem” Miller announced he was retiring from active competition, we treated the news the way you’d treat Aerosmith walking off the stage at the end of a concert in 1994. You know they’re going to come back. They know they’re going to come back. Hell, they know that you know they’re going to come back, because they haven’t even played “Walk This Way” yet. It’s a given that there will be at least one encore, but probably more like five. So everybody waits for the inevitable.

Instead of getting mad at “Mayhem” for wasting our time with this retirement charade that lasted less than six months, we’ll just say that we’re glad to have him back. For those of you in Hawaii and looking to take some time out from trying to get on the BJPenn.com show in order to go see some fights, the event is expected to take place “either March 28 or 29 at the Blaisdell Center Arena.” You know, just whenever they get around to it. Oh, those laid back Hawaiians.

Nothin’ like a good old vanity project. Here’s the first episode of The BJPenn.com Show, which follows "the greatest mixed martial artist in the world" as he does publicity appearances and chills with the fam. Picture Dana White’s video blogs but with much-higher production values and a bikini-clad host who looks like an off-brand Brooke Hogan. Good on Penn for having the resources to make an ego-stroking informercial for himself. (Between the chick narrator and the reverent tone, it kind of reminded me of the John Holmes documentary Exhausted, which was parodied to amazing effect in Boogie Nights.) Looking forward to that pretty Wahine contest!

After the jump: The first official trailer for UFC 94: St. Pierre vs. Penn II.

Chris Leben’s first shot at Michael Bisping didn’t exactly go as planned. Soon after signing to fight “The Count” at UFC 85 in London, Leben was forced to return to Oregon to deal with an outstanding warrant resulting from a DUI arrest before he could leave the country. Though Leben and the UFC were hoping to resolve the matter quickly, the judge had other plans. Leben was sentenced to thirty-five days in jail, prompting the UFC to scratch him from the card.

With his legal troubles now behind him, Leben is getting a second chance at Bisping, this time at UFC 89 in Birmingham, England. In this exclusive CagePotato interview Leben discusses his maturation process as a fighter, his gameplan against Bisping, dealing with hometown judges, and more.

CagePotato.com: Hey Chris. Thanks for talking with me. We’re a few weeks out from the fight. How is your preparation coming?

Really good, really well. It’s been long and intense and I’m kind of just getting to the point now where I’m ready to go fight and get this thing over with.

It seems like things really changed for you when you moved to Hawaii. What has that move done for you?

You know, it’s great. Moving to Hawaii is definitely the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. I had the opportunity to be the head coach at Icon and there are a whole bunch of guys out here training with me who are just great. But besides the gym and the wonderful people out here you have the weather and everything that is Hawaii. It’s been really conducive to my training.

I hear a lot of people say you’re much more mature these days, no longer such a wild guy in and out of the cage. What do you think prompted that transformation?

Losing (laughs). You know, I got away with being a brawler for a long time. And it’s hard to change things when they’re working. But when I fought Anderson I realized, I might be able to beat 95% of the guys out there, but I’ll never be a world champion fighting this way. So I had to go back and change a lot of things. That was one part of it.

And the other part was, you know, coaching. Now that I have a team of amateur guys fighting, it’s hard to tell them to do something if you’re not doing it yourself.

Stephanie Lum of Honolulu’s NBC affiliate KHNL 8 got a lot more than she bargained for when she made a visit to BJ Penn’s gym in Hilo for a segment called “Job Swap.” Penn greeted Lum by slamming her into the cage then taking her to the mat. Later, she was arm-barred into submission by a young boy who just wanted to “see what she was like.” (Or was that “feel what she was like”? Either way, awesome.) As local news fluff pieces go, it’s a success. Though technically, if they were really swapping jobs, wouldn’t BJ be trading puns back in the studio with Howard Dashefsky?

Here’s the third installment of the Icon Sport series “Chris Leben: Evolution of an Icon.” When this started, we were among those impressed by the production value (for the internet, anyway) and pleased by the general concept of this web series. But now that we’ve hit episode three, it’s starting to feel a little too much like a Chris Leben infomercial. Maybe it’s the strength coach going starry-eyed over him or his girlfriend talking up his dedication, but when everyone is so unrelentingly positive it becomes hard to digest.

I guess I just thought/hoped this would be more of an inside look and less of an extended hypefest. Now that I’ve typed that sentence, I realize how stupid it sounds.

As an added bonus, check out the trailer for the straight-to-DVD Randy Couture joint, “Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior” after the jump. Is there really a point in the film where some weirdo magic blood is dripped onto Couture’s head, presumably granting him special powers? Really? Then consider it Netflix’d.

Not long ago we wrote about the surprisingly well-done Chris Leben video from Icon Sport. Now the first episode is out, and while Leben himself is no Aristotle he does seem to be more mature than the Leben who KO’d doors on “The Ultimate Fighter”. Around the 4:00 mark talk turns to Michael Bisping, and then Leben describes it as “the fight that needs to happen”. That might be overstating it a bit, but at the very least it’s a fight that would be cool if it really happened this time.